Shortly after I joined my current team, I was confounded by how a type (here named Thing) was used and I sought to catalogue it for future reference. I defined

Shortly after I joined my current team, I was confounded by how a type (here named Thing) was used and I sought to catalogue it for future reference. I defined the type Thing as best as I could understand its usage throughout the software. My direct supervisor very correctly questioned my effort: “surely that is not what Thing is?” I agreed, and yet, that’s exactly what Thing is. In real usage. The type system can express quite a lot more than “Thing is all possible data merged together and even naming keys depends on where you look”, but the type system can’t lie and tell you thing are or are not contrary to facts. It isn’t the type system’s fault that all things are part of Thing, or that no thing about Thing is knowable. It’s something the type system might have helped, if anyone consulted the type system. Instead we have Thing.